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are more noble than either. Perfectly unsophisticated, and sufficiently elevated above vulgar, or common nature, they appear scenes suited to grand and solemn transactions. They have power to rekindle those trains of imagery-those antique associations, which imaginations at all versed in classic lore, have long since treasured up. Although it may be said that inanimate Nature never grows old; or, bears no chronological markings on her face,-yet, despite of this conviction, Poussin has discovered and employed the means of extracting and excluding from his landscape compositions, all modern ideas. You are led to fancy as you gaze, that his pictures cannot have been painted later than the days of Sophocles and Euripides. So successfully do they carry back the mind into remote antiquity, that, in the instance before us, you are more than half persuaded that the next figures, or characters, who will enter on the scene, will be Edipus and his admirable daughter; or, perhaps, Cassandra the prophetess. You incontinently whisper to yourself that, " Assuredly we are here introduced into the precinct of some ancient and classic city-Thebes, Argos, Mycenæ, or Sparta, where the weary traveller on his arrival finds the means of ablution in the overflow of a marble fountain, and finds a grove sacred to the tutelary, or protecting, deity of the district." At the left hand corner, we behold this traveller draped in yellow, bathing his feet ere he paces the holy ground: and could we wend round the corner on the right hand-round the foot of the pedestal of the ruined monumental column, we firmly persuade ourselves that we should behold there the temple of Jupiter, Minerva, or of some other guardian deity.

You are taught to fancy that the graceful figure clad in white, is proceeding from the river (of which a single reach winds through the landscape) toward the temple, after purifying the peplum, or dress of the priestess; and when your eye wanders onward to the bole of a tree which terminates the grove to the left, and you behold there an inscribed tablet-—a votive offering, perhaps, and the simulacra of two patron deities, you scarcely entertain a doubt that the grove is sacred to Castor and Pollux, or the twins of Latona. If to the former, Sparta is the city of which you perceive a suburb at a distance, backed by lofty and cloud-capped mountains. A prostrate devotee is reclining beneath the tree, while another meditative figure, clad in red drapery, is approaching.

Poussin, more than any other painter of landscape, has successfully assimilated the broken and irregular forms of rough ground, rocks, and trees, with architectural regularity, and length of line; and in the present work, the harmonious contrast which is thus produced, cannot but impress the student with profound respect for the mind which conceived and acted upon principles so simple and efficient. It is by means of the occult relations which he discovered between these two elementary principles, that his grand graphic edifices are constructed; that his variegated unity is produced; and that he is justly esteemed the founder or architect of that majestic style of landscape which is almost identified with his

name.

The grove which he has here depicted, is of noble growth; but the trees are not oaks. Their branching is not lateral enough, and their foliage is too pendent for that of the oak: neither are they ash, poplar, or

elm: plane, ilex, or chestnut, they may possibly be intended for, but we rather find them to be so generalised as to be esteemed simply forest trees.

The man and woman engaged in some interesting conversation and seated on the ground, at the foot of a monumental column overhung with foliage, are admirably composed--two landscape-figures better suited to their situation, we know not where to find, and the local and positive colours of their draperies, confer due repose on the abounding verdure and neutral tints of the groves.

As Mr. Ottley has well observed, "Niccolo has so judiciously varied the tints of the ground, of the masonry, of the fountain, and the monumental structure opposite to it, as well as the colours of the dresses, that there is, altogether, no want of variety in the colouring of the picture; whilst, at the same time, great solemnity of effect is occasioned in it by the trees, vigorous and full of leaf, being represented all of the same dark hue."

To conclude: the sentiment of majestic simplicity with which we are here impressed, pervades nearly all the landscapes of Nicholas Poussin, and while it captivates, expands, the tasteful and sympathetic mind. Something there is, about his works of this description, almost immediately productive of a contemplative mood in the beholder: something of erudite sanctity, which, like the Greek tragedies, elevates and transports us far away from present times and places, and incontinently throws the imagination back toward the best ages of antiquity.

This picture was presented to the nation by the late Sir George Beaumont.

A BACCHANALIAN DANCE;

OR, RURAL REJOICING of the GOLDEN AGE.

NICCOLO POUSSIN.

DURING the first residence of Poussin at Paris, and while he was struggling to get from thence to Italy, he became acquainted with the Chevalier Marino, an Italian poet of some temporary celebrity, who had a taste for pictures. "Men of genius understand each other, and agree well together, when the Arts they practise are dissimilar:" and as the infirmities of the poet obliged him to keep much to his bed, and as Poussin was, at the time (and indeed at all times) a close domestic student, the poet and painter, inhabiting the same house, were much in each other's society. They not unfrequently read poetry together, and mutually listened to each other's remarks.

"From this period it is (says the French biographer of Poussin) that we are to date his decided taste for poetical compositions, in which nymphs, satyrs, and shepherds are the principal characters, and also his deep and various knowledge of subjects derived from fable and history." Local circumstances, adverse to the wishes and the professional progress of the painter, separated these friends for awhile; but they afterwards met at Rome, where the poet introduced Poussin to Cardinal Barberini and some other distinguished characters; but proceeding onward to Naples, Marino died there, and left the painter destitute-excepting the wealth he possessed in his own rich attainments.

Marino has, by an excellent judge of our own

country, who is himself well versed in the Art, been deemed one of the first corrupters of the fine Italian taste for poetry which prevailed during the preceding century but, if so, the taint reached not to Poussin. It happened between these friends, as it sometimes happened in the concerns of the ancient theatre, where action was assigned to one player, or mime, and utterance to another; and where, while the vocalist performed ill, the panto-mime was admirable. And on the whole, it would appear, that the conversation of Marino operated as little else than an index, pointing the mind of the artist toward the beauties and merits of the Greek poets, perhaps; but certainly toward those of the Greek relievos that were of contemporaneous production; and that to this latter source, next to the emanations of his own genius, we owe the finest exertions of the talents of this great master in the art of painting.

Most of the deities and sub-deities of the classic mythology, consisted of the various energies of Nature, personified by Art. The science, or system of rules, which regulated this personification, was at once the leading motive and principle of the loftier aims of the Grecian artists, and gave rise to that variety of fine forms—each with its system of homogeneous or consistent parts-which we trace in their heroic and mythological sculptures with such just admiration. Poussin, though transposed into a posterior age, was of the same race, and in his Bacchanalian dance, we behold personifications of those rural powers who were supposed to rejoice hilariously at the season of the vintage,

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When, for their teeming flocks and granges full,
In wanton dance they praise the bounteous PAN."

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